Woman who recorded herself viewing YouTube on a Tarrant County computer pleads guilty
A Fort Worth woman who was charged with breach of computer security after she recorded and posted online a video of herself reaching her YouTube channel via a desktop in a Tarrant County government building has pleaded guilty.
Carolyn Rodriguez, 55, was sentenced on Aug. 21 to one day in jail and fined $2,000, the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office said.
A second case in which Rodriguez was charged that was connected to the May 30 offense was dismissed.
Rodriguez posts videos on her YouTube channel, Carolina in Fort Worth. She could not be reached for an interview.
In the video that led to her conviction, Rodriguez walks into the Tarrant County’s Facilities Management Department’s construction office in north Fort Worth. She tells viewers that she plans to ask about what is inside a second building on the property. No one else is present.
Rodriguez sits and briefly puts her feet up on a desk before using a computer to view her YouTube channel.
Rodriguez left before county employees returned to the office to find a note she left, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. One employee “watched several videos she uploaded, including the one of her accessing his computer.”
David Phillips, the county’s facilities management director, has said that carpenter shop staff had left the building for a job site when Rodriguez apparently entered and recorded the video. The staff erred in leaving a door unlocked, Phillips has said.
Under state law, a person commits breach of computer security if he or she knowingly accesses a computer, computer network or computer system without the effective consent of the owner.
